8 January 2013

CIA torture plane was in Shannon Airport 6 days before abduction of German citizen

» Mark Moloney

Amnesty International Ireland: ‘The Irish Government knew that the CIA used Shannon Airport as part of their renditions operations. The plane used by the CIA to take Mr El-Masri to be tortured in a US-run prison in Kabul came via Shannon.’

THE CIA plane used to transport a German citizen to a notorious US-run
torture centre in Afghanistan known as “The Salt Pit” was in Shannon Airport
just six days before it was used in the abduction of Khaled El-Masri from
Macedonia.

Irish-based peace group Shannonwatch, which monitors military use of
Shannon Airport, says that a European Court of Human Rights ruling last month
is one of the “clearest documented cases to date” that Ireland’s Shannon
Airport is being used by the US for torture and rendition flights.

The group also backed a call by Amnesty International Ireland for an
independent investigation, adding that it will do everything in its power to
make the investigation a reality.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in December that Macedonia was
responsible for the unlawful detention, enforced disappearance, torture and
other ill-treatment of German national Khaled El-Masri.

Amnesty says that the decision also shows that the Irish Government
facilitated the US “to abduct, transfer, ‘disappear’ and torture people in the
course of rendition operations”.

The court ruled that
Macedonia “had been responsible for [El-Masri's] torture and ill-treatment both
in the country itself and after his transfer to the US authorities in the
context of an extra-judicial rendition”.

El-Masri was detained by Macedonian border guards while returning from
a vacation on 31 December 2003 because his name was similar to that of an
al-Qaeda suspect. Three weeks later he was handed over to a CIA ‘snatch squad’
and flown to Kabul.

It has since emerged that the
plane (registration N313P) used to abduct El-Masri and fly him to the Afghan
torture chamber on 23 January 2004 had arrived at Shannon Airport six days
earlier.

El-Masri was held at the Afghan facility for four months where he was
repeatedly tortured and beaten before embarking on a hunger strike, demanding
due process. He was eventually released from the facility and dumped on a road
in rural Albania on 28 May 2004. Macedonia was ordered to pay €60,000 in
compensation.

“The Irish Government knew that the CIA used Shannon Airport as part of
their renditions operations. The plane used by the CIA to take Mr El-Masri out
of Macedonia, to be tortured in a US-run prison in Kabul, came via Shannon.
Amnesty International Ireland is calling again for a full, independent
investigation into the use of Shannon Airport to support CIA rendition
operations.”

Despite election pledges by the Labour Party (and particularly by
leader Eamon Gilmore) to end the use of Shannon by the US military, thousands
of US troops pass through the Irish airport on their way to wars in Iraq and
Aghanistan every year.

Earlier last year, information obtained by Sinn Féin through a
parliamentary question showed that, in a period of just four months, the Labour
and Fine Gael Government allowed 306 US aircraft carrying weapons, explosives
or munitions to the Middle East to pass through Ireland.

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